New Jersey’s war on transparency and accountability

In the past three years, some of New Jersey’s most powerful political figures have worked to erode accountability and transparency in the state. This ought to set off alarm bells for every resident who relies on state and local government to work for them instead of the insiders, political operatives, and contractors who already enjoy too much access and too little scrutiny.

The slide into secrecy began with campaign-finance and ethics oversight. In 2023, lawmakers approved the so-called Elections Transparency Act, an Orwellian name for a law that was the opposite of its stated purpose. The law raised donation limits, weakened long-standing pay-to-play restrictions, and diluted the enforcement power of the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, the state’s independent referee for money in politics. ELEC’s oversight board was kneecapped just as the floodgates for big checks were opened wider. Reformers warned the changes would make it harder to track who is influencing whom in Trenton. They were right.

Then, in 2024, the state’s Open Public Records Act was gutted. Lawmakers and the governor approved an overhaul that critics say will make it harder for the public to obtain information that belongs to them. The new law allows governments to sue residents for so-called “harassing” requests, eliminates the guarantee that a requester who wins an OPRA lawsuit can recover legal fees, and gives public agencies more leeway to deny records outright. Journalists and watchdogs warned the changes would chill access and encourage stonewalling. They already have.

Now comes the latest blow: a move to weaken the Office of the State Comptroller.

Under Acting Comptroller Kevin Walsh, the Office of the State Comptroller has published more than 100 investigative reports and recovered more than $670 million in public funds. The office has exposed conflicts of interest in health-insurance funds serving more than 100,000 public employees, uncovered deficits in public pension systems, identified unconstitutional spending on police training, and documented waste and mismanagement in school transportation, nursing home, and opioid-program contracts. That is the kind of work New Jersey desperately needs more of, not less.

Yet legislative leaders want to strip the office of its investigatory authority and shift that power to the State Commission of Investigation, a body that is essentially controlled by legislative leaders. The idea is being marketed as “efficiency.” But make no mistake: it is a power play designed to weaken independent oversight at the precise moment when the state’s oversight mechanisms are already under strain.

Taken together, these three moves — the loosening of campaign-finance rules, the gutting of public-records law, and the effort to dismantle the comptroller’s investigative tools — form an undeniable pattern. When watchdog agencies are constrained, when records become harder to obtain, and when political money flows with fewer restrictions, insider deals become easier to hide. Bad actors thrive in the dark. New Jersey knows this better than most states.

These are not abstract concerns. The Office of the State Comptroller recently found serious deficiencies in several New Jersey nursing homes, including unsafe staffing levels, inadequate infection-control practices, and failures that placed vulnerable residents at risk. The investigations exposed how millions of taxpayer dollars were flowing to facilities that were not meeting basic standards of care. That kind of neglect does not survive long under bright lights and sharp scrutiny. But if the watchdog is muzzled and the records are harder to obtain, the shadows grow longer.

Efficiency is the stated rationale. But “efficiency” is often the fig leaf placed over policies that centralize power and reduce accountability. When rules are retooled to benefit those already in power, public trust is diminished. When independent oversight is weakened, the powerful feel emboldened. And when transparency becomes optional, government becomes unmoored from the people it is supposed to serve.

New Jersey cannot afford this downward spiral. Residents deserve a government that operates in plain sight, one that treats public dollars as the taxpayers’ money they are, not as fuel for political patronage or private profit. They deserve sunlight, not shadows.

The state’s incoming governor campaigned on transparency. That promise will soon be tested. The new administration has an opportunity — and an obligation — to restore the architecture of open government that is being dismantled.

If New Jersey wants to be more than a punchline about corruption, it must reclaim transparency, sharpen accountability, and reject the false notion that efficiency requires less public scrutiny.

The people of this state deserve a government that answers to them.